


Riptide

by yfere



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Coda C2E60, M/M, Pre-Relationship, apparently I wrote this last week and then....forgot about it, featuring: ocean metaphors!, idk about this I just like em talking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 22:33:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18748435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yfere/pseuds/yfere
Summary: Caleb quotes Fjord back at him a second time, Fjord fails to be persuasive. An imaginary conversation that would take place in the evening of C2E60.





	Riptide

Gods, he cleaned up well.

Face shaven, the faint cleft of his chin a deeper, purplish shadow in the shadows cast by the dim light of the driftglobe. Skin pink from scrubbing, since he did that now, when before he would leave the blood on his face to crust. A glossy glint to his hair—so that’s its color, underneath everything. With his new cloak pulled close around him, he looked almost a different man. Fjord half wanted to sidle up to him, say “ _Hello_ stranger, you come round here often?”

It might be funny. Might. Or Caleb might cock his head at him again, turn away like he did the other night. All, _that went worse than I expected,_ like it didn’t go ten million times worse for Fjord, as fucking always. He couldn’t even hope that Caleb would forget about it.

He _was_ a bit like a stranger though, and not just in appearance. And it was strange, wasn’t it, that every time Fjord thought he understood him, he’d slip out of his grasp again. An impossible person. Being around him was sometimes like treading water by the shore—Fjord would feel safe enough in the water, confident that with a few strokes he could take a rest on the sand, but at any moment he could be caught in a flash riptide, dragged farther out to sea.

You don’t swim against a riptide, that’s the key thing, he reminded himself. You go perpendicular, or you let yourself get carried with it until it’s run its course. But if he was being honest, he didn’t trust that Caleb would run out of energy, would free him once he was caught. Which meant he had to—he had to—

Convince him? He didn’t know enough to try it. Still.

“Caleb,” he murmured. It seemed like no one was really sleeping, save Caduceus and Soorna. Most of the girls had disappeared, though Caleb, wire in hand, claimed they were fine. Beau was huddled up in the corner with her scrap of fabric, writing, and Fjord’s body ached too much for him to rest in more than hour-long stretches. Caleb, for his part, seemed more concerned with fiddling with the second anchor they found. A lot more smashed up than the last one, thanks to Nott’s gun, but Caleb seemed attached to the thing regardless. “What are you up to there?”

Caleb twisted it around in his hands some more, and sighed. “I want to know how they work. But it seems it isn’t something that can be done just by looking at it.”

“How they—work?” Fjord had his own questions about the things, but they were more like Beau’s questions, in the corner— how they got there, who was planting them, why?

Caleb glanced at him, quirking an eyebrow. “You mean you don’t want to know?” _Aren’t you the least bit curious?_

Oh. _Oh_. “You have me there. Let me know if you find out anything.”

Caleb hummed, and picked at one of the gem foci.

“If I can ask…”

“You can always ask,” Caleb said, turning the device over.

“Why do you wan—” _No, wrong question._ “Why do you think we can stop the war? We were running away from it just a little while ago. Don’t you think it’s a little…big?”

Caleb’s hands stilled. “It’s a good thing to work towards.”

“I never said it wasn’t.”

“It probably is too big for us, right now. But I don’t think it will always be, if we.” Caleb paused, frowned. “It’s not something I think we need to do immediately. Just, a direction. A purpose. Have you thought of what might happen to our homelands, if we do nothing?”

 _What home?_ Fjord thought. But that wasn’t true of all of them. “I’ve thought about what might happen to our homelands because of what we’ve already done.”

“ _Yes_ ,” Caleb said, and there was a flash in his eyes, something sharp and glinting, water running over a blade. Fjord wanted to catch it in his hands. “If we can already change things like we have, then I think we can do a great deal more. In the long term. Something greater than ourselves, something _good_. If it’s something we aim towards”

And this is what he’d been afraid of, because Caleb’s fervent tone was drawing him in, that and the confident set of his chin, and his eyes, that were far too steady on his. _But riptides always look like calm water._

 _Why are you so determined to do this?_ he wanted to ask. _Are you desperate? Does this have to do with the Cerberus Assembly, with your past, the people you said you killed? If you killed the people dearest to you, how can I know you won’t get us killed too? And don’t you know I’m not like you, I’m not meant for anything like this, I was supposed to live and die a sailor, I never had a special talent for anything but bullshitting._

But his last thought yanked him the hardest. On impulse he reached forward and took Caleb’s hand, squeezed it as Caleb inhaled sharply.

“Most days, I worry about keeping everyone alive,” Fjord said. “It seems impossible, sometimes.” He thought of the puncture wounds in his chest, still aching with every breath. The steady roar of the ocean in his ears when all else was quiet, which might have reassured him once, but no longer. “I don’t like it when I go down, making you all look after me. I don’t like it when you go down either. It’s hard enough when it’s just us that we’re trying to keep alive. How can we take responsibility for a bunch of strangers?”

Caleb’s expression softened. “No one is asking you to take responsibility, Fjord.”

“What are you asking?"

Caleb looked back down at the anchor, sighed, and put it aside. He glanced at Beau, and Fjord followed his look, saw her rubbing at her temples and scratching something out in frustration.

“I don’t mind so much if we just look after ourselves,” Caleb said, and that was a lie too large for Fjord to believe. “When it was just me—and after I met our little rogue, for a little while, I was used to thinking of myself. It is an easy thing, when you are hungry and afraid. You were witness to it. So—it’s possible it’s foolish, to think that we have the power to survive through worse than we have. But I feel, bolder. I feel like I can care about other things now.”

Did he imagine it, Caleb’s eyes catching on his?

“I think the rest of us can, too,” Caleb continued. “In the end, there’s nothing that makes our lives more important than any other. It’s worth risking a bit, then, to help them, to stop this. And not a stupid risk, either. We're capable enough. I think amongst all of us, we should be fine.”

There was a strange look on Caleb’s face, and something pulling at Fjord’s memory, though he didn’t know what.

“That last thing you said…”

“That’s something you’ve said to me, _ja_ ,” Caleb said. “Right before, _we’ll make it work_.”

“Right. We will do that.”

“Of course.” Caleb reached down for the anchor again, slipping from Fjord’s loose grip, and something broke, a watery tension Fjord didn’t quite know he was suspended in until it was gone.

“If you truly think this is beyond us though, I will defer to your judgment,” Caleb said, which Fjord was nearly sure was another lie. But a nice one to hear.

“I’m willin’ to be surprised,” Fjord said. “Seems to be happening a lot lately.”

_Let the riptide carry you away—_


End file.
